Archive for January, 2011
Hope and Dismay about Haiti’s Future
Nicholas Kristof provides “a useful reminder of the limitations of charity and foreign aid” in his New York Times op-ed about Haiti today. “Nearly a year after the earthquake in Haiti,” he notes, “more than one million people are still living in tents and reconstruction has barely begun.”
He emphasizes the importance of “trade, not aid” and of the role of business: “It’s hard to think of a charitable project that will be as beneficial as the Coca-Cola Company’s decision to build up the mango juice industry in Haiti, supporting 25,000 farmers.”
He also cites a seemingly successful microfinance aid project that lends money to poor women in Haiti to begin and expand business ventures by, for example, investing in livestock or growing fruit for sale. It is impossible to evaluate the record of that organization based on the anecdotes Kristof provides, but, while microcredit may for a time alleviate the conditions under which poor recipients live (and be successful at pulling some recipients out of poverty), there is little evidence from its overall record that microcredit effectively reduces poverty. It is certainly not a way to reduce poverty on a widespread or sustainable basis. David Roodman of the Center for Global Development notes, for example, that “microfinance institutions in Haiti only reach perhaps 250,000 people, about 2.5% of the population.” (For a critique of some of the claims of microcredit proponents see Thomas Dichter’s Cato study.)
In line with Kristof’s main argument and with decades of evidence of successful countries around the world, the most effective way to reduce poverty in economically repressed Haiti is by opening its markets and increasing economic freedom. Unfortunately, Haiti’s reconstruction and long-term development plan, according to which the United States and international donors have pledged more than $15 billion, reads like a relic of central planning with virtually no mention of policies that promote economic freedom. Two sentences in the document mention the importance of clarifying land titles. One page mentions the role of the private sector, but it is in regards to its cooperation with the government’s “development centers” that will operate throughout the country to stimulate predetermined industries using government funds and guarantees and for “better redistribution of [the] population.”
We’ve been down this road before. If the Haitian government wishes to avoid disappointment and free itself from dependence on international aid, it needs to rethink its approach to development.
Obsession with Senate “Holds” Is Misguided
With the start of the 112th Congress, Senate Democrats have offered a set of rule changes, most of which are geared toward the filibuster. Some of these changes, such as guaranteeing the minority at least three amendments, make a great deal of sense. I’ve long thought that the practice of the majority leader (of any party) “filling the amendment tree” did not make for good legislating. And I say that, recalling as a former Senate staffer, the practice made my life easier on numerous occasions.
One part of the package, however, that of ending “secret” holds, strikes me as rather uninformed as to actual Senate practice. First let’s recall that a “hold’ is essentially a method for senators to tell the majority leader that if the leader were to try to move a nomination or piece of legislation by unanimous consent, that Senator would object on the Senate floor.
There are lots of reasons why senators might put a hold on a bill. They object to the bill and would like to be able to vote “no,” which is impossible when moving bills by unanimous consent (UC). Maybe they’d like to offer an amendment. Or, I know this sounds crazy, maybe they (or their staff) would like time to actually read the bill.
The rules change package does aim at ending “secret” holds, where the senator placing the hold is not publicly known. Again speaking from my own experience of seven years as a Senate committee staffer and having helped passed dozens of bills by UC, I have never once had a problem of figuring out who was behind a hold. In fact, most the time the Senate office in question would call me and let me know what their problem was. The vast majority of the time we were able to address the issue and move forward. Many holds only lasted a few hours. Several offices, such as Senator Coburn’s, actually read every bill that was brought to the floor, and all they wanted was a little time to do so. I can’t see how anyone would have a problem with that.
As to the secret nature of holds, I have yet to see a case where that knowledge didn’t become public. The risk to making it public immediately is that every special interest involved in the bill would swarm upon whoever placed the hold. And that is what removing the “secret” hold is really about: giving special interests further opportunities to pressure senators before they have the time to actually learn the issue and perhaps work out a compromise with their colleagues.
At its core, the hold is simply a courtesy between senators. And courtesy is something I think the Senate needs more of, rather than less. Of course, holds would not matter at all if we just made two simple changes: no more moving bills/nominations by unanimous consent (have actual votes), and announce at least a week ahead of time which bills will be voted on and have the bill language publicly available.
Cloning “Superman”
We all know there are too few good schools and too many lousy ones. The trouble is, we lack a mechanism for reliably scaling up the former and crowding out the latter. Competitive markets perform this service in other fields, from coffee-shops to cell phones. Can the same thing work in education?
To find out, we’ve invited experts from both hemispheres to tell us what their nations have learned from decades of experience with private-school choice. Peje Emilsson founded the largest chain of for-profit private schools in Sweden’s nationwide voucher program. Humberto Santos has studied the academic performance of public schools, independent private schools, and chains of private schools in Chile’s voucher program. Responding to their findings and asking challenging questions will be Education Week journalist Sarah Sparks.
I hope you can join us for this fascinating discussion, and lunch, at noon on January 28th. Click here to register. The sooner we can stop “Waiting for Superman,” the better.
The Current Wisdom: Better Model, Less Warming
The Current Wisdom is a series of monthly posts in which Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michaels reviews interesting items on global warming in the scientific literature that may not have received the media attention that they deserved, or have been misinterpreted in the popular press.
The Current Wisdom only comments on science appearing in the refereed, peer-reviewed literature, or that has been peer-screened prior to presentation at a scientific congress.
Better Model, Less Warming
Bet you haven’t seen this one on TV: A newer, more sophisticated climate model has lost more than 25% of its predicted warming! You can bet that if it had predicted that much more warming it would have made the local paper.
The change resulted from a more realistic simulation of the way clouds work, resulting in a major reduction in the model’s “climate sensitivity,” which is the amount of warming predicted for a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over what it was prior to the industrial revolution.
Prior to the modern era, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, as measured in air trapped in ice in the high latitudes (which can be dated year-by-year) was pretty constant, around 280 parts per million (ppm). No wonder CO2 is called a “trace gas”—there really is not much of it around.
Republican $100 Billion Spending Cut
A top agenda item for the incoming House Republicans is to immediately start cutting spending. The GOP promised to reduce “nondefense” (or alternatively “nonsecurity”) spending for 2011 to the 2008 level, representing a $100 billion cut. GOP leaders are now being accused of backsliding on that promise, so let’s take a look at the numbers.
The idea is to reduce fiscal 2011 “budget authority” to the level it was in fiscal 2008. The chart shows the growth in nondefense budget authority since 2000. The spike in 2009 is from $265 billion in discretionary spending authorized in the “stimulus” bill.
Congress currently has a “continuing resolution” in place that keeps 2011 spending at about the same level as 2010, as shown in the chart. Thus, the House GOP will need to cut spending for the remainder of this fiscal year by about $55 billion to hit the 2008 level. That is less than $100 billion, but the higher cut number was based on proposed spending by Obama for 2011 that wasn’t enacted.
The important thing is that Congress needs to start cutting all types of spending right away. We face a fiscal emergency as debt is exploding, and there are many federal spending activities that are damaging to society and the economy. The GOP should cut defense and entitlement spending as well, but nondefense discretionary cuts are a good place to start.
In considering cuts, note that about $136 billion in nondefense discretionary “stimulus” bill money is still sloshing through the government in 2011 and beyond, so spending cuts (unfortunately) won’t starve the bureaucracies as much as liberals might fear.
The chart puts proposed spending cuts in context. House GOP leaders now admit that they spent too much during the past decade, and indeed the chart shows that nondefense discretionary spending jumped $264 billion over the last decade. Much of the increase came when the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House, so now is the GOP’s chance to start reversing out those Bush-era increases.
Data note: current stimulus and nondefense discretionary budget authority data are available on pages 13 and 21 of CBO’s August outlook.
Embracing More of Trade’s Selling Points
As a primer for the new Congress, my friend John Murphy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce posted the “top ten reasons why pro-growth trade and investment policies and agreements are good for America.” As usual, I agree with John’s points. And I concur that the time is particularly ripe for educating policymakers about the virtues of trade.
But with all due respect to John, his list is not so much about trade and investment. It’s really about exports (one of 10 points is about imports). Informing new members and reminding old of the benefits of exports to U.S. businesses and workers is clearly a worthwhile objective of the Chamber, the business community, and really anybody interested in economic growth. But in some respect there’s a preaching-to-the-choir element in that approach. You’re not going to find too many policymakers opposed to exports, and the administration has constructed a whole new bureaucracy devoted to the proposition that exports should double in five years.
Where the trade agenda has stalled (and where it always has problems) is on the rough terrain that–for lack of a better catchphrase–might be called “rationalizing” imports. That’s been the hard part of trade adovcacy over the years: “We had to cede some access to our markets, but look what we got in exchange!”
In pitching the very same bilateral trade agreements two and three years ago that the business community is pitching today, then-USTR Susan Schwab liked to remind Congress that the United States had an aggregate trade surplus with the countries with whom the Bush administration had concluded free trade agreements, as though that were the appropriate success metric. “We export more to them than we import from them; let’s call this a triumph!” But anyone inclined to accept that statistic as conclusive could simply visit the Commerce Department’s website and see that, at the time, our overall trade account was in deficit by about $800 billion. Thus, if “exports minus imports” is the measure by which we judge the benefits of trade, then America should shun trade entirely. That sales approach doesn’t seem to be in short- or long-run equilibrium. Mercantilist arguments only ensure that every step forward on trade requires a full-fledged battle. We need better–that is, more comprehensive–salesmanship of trade for the new Congress.
In 2002, then-USTR Robert Zoellick said of his new Doha Round proposal for zero tariffs on industrial goods by 2015 that it would “turn every corner store into a duty-free shop.” That was the right message—although apparently not for the timid White House at the time, which adhered to the sweep-imports-under-the-rug model. In 2011, we should remember, embrace, and revive Ambassador Zoellick’s words in our advocacy of trade liberalization. In that spirit, I return to John Murphy’s top ten list and introduce a few tweaks (in bold).
The RTTT Made Me Do It!
Adopting national curriculum standards — the so-called “Common Core” — is voluntary for states. That is what we’ve long been told, and that is what the text of a new report looking at implementation of the standards repeats. But within that report is powerful evidence of how involuntary and federally led Common Core adoption has truly been.
According to the report, which furnishes results of a November 2010 survey of state education officials, the vast majority of states that had adopted the Common Core as of November had done so at least in part because of “the possible effect” of doing so “on success of our Race to the Top application.” Race to the Top, you might recall, was a $4.35 billion federal contest for education funding, and to maximize their chances of winning states had to adopt national standards.
The report tries to downplay this revelatory finding by emphasizing that a slightly larger number of states – 36 versus 30 – cited ”the rigor” of the Common Core in their adoption decisions. But what state education official is going to say that adoption was only about money and not also at least some educational considerations? On the flip side, that officials in any, much less thirty, states were willing to concede the importance of ugly federal-dollar chasing says a ton. In particular, it says what reasonable observers have been stating all along: National standards have largely been bought by Washington, not “voluntarily” adopted by states.
More on Captain Owen Honors
I hadn’t planned to comment on the matter of Captain Owen Honors, the commanding officer of the USS Enterprise relieved of command following the release of some off-color videos that he recorded as the Enterprise’s executive officer (XO) in 2006 and 2007. But then Chris Kennedy in our media department twisted my arm, and the next thing I knew I had written 900 words for CNN.
Before I delivered the essay for publication, I solicited feedback from a number of former officers, and one still serving, including several of my classmates at the George Washington University NROTC unit. Not all agreed with my take — I faulted Honors for his poor judgment, and concluded that the punishment fit the offense — but all appreciated the even-handed approach that I tried to take with the issue.
I was grateful for the timely feedback, and for the response to the article over the last 24 hours. I have received far more emails following this piece than for anything that I have ever written (and I’ve written almost 150 articles in nearly eight years at Cato). There are more than 530 comments on the CNN site, and 380+ Facebook recommendations. Most of these responses have been encouraging, and a few have thanked me for my perspective, even when they disagreed with me. A few other messages, including from those who served with Captain Honors, faulted me, especially, for claiming that he had allowed a “hostile work environment” to be created on the Enterprise. These messengers assured me that nothing could be further from the truth. The crew, I am told, loved Honors as XO.
In retrospect, it was inappropriate for me to use a phrase that has a very particular legal meaning – ”hostile work environment” — especially when I had no first-hand knowledge that that was an accurate description. On the contrary, I had some evidence from news reports that morale on the Enterprise was quite high. I have since learned that there was a morale problem on the ship for a while, in part due to the fresh water restrictions that the shower scenes in the videos tried to make light of. By many accounts, XO Honors was instrumental in turning this state of affairs around. The Enterprise, a bear of a ship to operate, the oldest nuclear-powered vessel in the fleet, with eight (8!) reactors, earned unit citations under Honors’s leadership.
All that said, I stand by my original assessment. In striving to improve the crew’s morale, Captain Honors crossed the fine line between clever and stupid. He demonstrated poor judgment in producing videos in an official capacity that could easily be taken out of context, as they have been.
In short, the one word that I wish I had used in the op-ed that should be understandable to all readers, military and civilian, is “professionalism.” In other words, do well, get results, but do it in the right way.
We know that business used to be run according to a very different set of rules a generation ago, as the hit television series Mad Men reminds us. So too in the military. Behavior that once was taken for granted simply isn’t acceptable any longer. The Navy shouldn’t make exceptions for those who forget who they are, and what they represent.
Gates’s Cuts that Aren’t
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is poised to axe or significantly restructure a number of high-profile weapons platforms, and otherwise rein in the Pentagon’s budget. The reports present these initiatives as intended to preempt greater scrutiny of the military’s budget by Congress.
The cuts will be announced later today, but it seems pretty clear that Gates will call for terminating the unnecessary Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), a Marine Corps program that is more than 176 percent over its original per-vehicle cost. Unhappily for taxpayers, the Pentagon has already spent $3 billion on the program, which has managed to deliver only prototypes. The Marine Corps’s version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will also be delayed, according to news reports. And the secretary will continue his search for efficiencies in defense, an initiative that even the reliably conservative Washington Examiner finds worthy.
But amidst all the focus on “cuts”, two facts stand out:
1) Gates intends for the efficiencies, if they materialize, to be plowed back into the military’s coffers — not returned to taxpayers or used for reducing the deficit. Pentagon spokesman Jeff Morell told Politico’s Jen DiMascio ”any story which purports that he is going to announce that the services don’t get to keep and invest the savings they’ve made are flat out wrong.”
2) The Pentagon’s base budget, excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to grow in 2012. The FY 2011 base budget calls for spending $549 billion; the Obama administration is expected to request $554 billion for the Pentagon in its FY 2012 budget, which will be released next month. In real, inflation-adjusted dollars, that is a 42 percent increase over the base budget in 2001. When the costs of the wars are factored in, total Pentagon spending has grown 72 percent — again, in real terms — since 2001.
Keep those essential points in mind when you hear the predictable cries from the Defending Defense crowd that Gates is shortchanging the military as it fights two wars. He is doing nothing of the sort.
Indeed, although Gates’s moves are aimed at preempting Congress, members and their staffs aren’t fooled. One Senate aide told DiMascio that despite Gates’s prior cuts, there are still a number of troubled programs drawing billions of taxpayer dollars. “So we can cut,” he said. “We can cut and we can cut big.”
To make “big” cuts in the military’s budget without rethinking its missions would be a mistake. Instead, the Obama administration should be actively soliciting input on ways to reduce the military’s global posture; terminate the open-ended nation-building mission in Afghanistan, and stop planning similar missions in other failed states; and compel wealthy, stable allies to bear the costs and risks of their own defense. Such steps would allow the White House and Congress to responsibly restructure our military based on a realistic assessment of available means and achievable ends, with the savings being returned to U.S. taxpayers.
Toward Restoring Constitutional Government
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
In light of today’s reading of the Constitution in the new House, what misinterpretations of the Constitution do you regularly see in American politics? And are House Republicans implying that the previous Democratic majority did not have a firm grasp of the government’s founding document?
My response:
Thanks to the Tea Party, as I wrote in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Congress seems to be rediscovering the Constitution — or at least many House Republicans seem to be. When members read the document aloud today, apparently for the first time in the nation’s history, they’ll be throwing down a marker: “We take the Constitution seriously, and intend to abide by its principles.” If true, how refreshing.
This is not a partisan matter. As many Republicans have said — albeit, some only after November’s elections — both parties for years have ignored the Constitution’s limits on political power. To confirm that, we need look no further than to James Madison, the principal author of the document, who assured skeptical ratifiers in Federalist 45 that the powers authorized by the Constitution were “few and defined.” That hardly describes today’s federal behemoth.
Thus, the main “misinterpretation” has been over the very idea of constitutional limits — particularly as inherent in the doctrine of enumerated powers, the principle that “We the People” gave Congress only 18 enumerated powers. The Commerce Clause, for example, was written mainly to ensure interstate commerce unfettered by state interference, not to enable Congress to regulate every aspect of life. And the General Welfare Clause was meant to limit Congress’s taxing power pursuant to its enumerated ends to objects of national, not particular, concern: it wasn’t meant to enable Congress to redistribute private wealth at will.
The great change came during the New Deal, of course, after FDR’s infamous Court packing threat, when a cowed Court began turning the Constitution on its head. But don’t take my word for that constitutional legerdemain. Here’s Roosevelt, writing to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in 1935: “I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.” And here’s Rexford Tugwell, one of the principal architects of the New Deal, reflecting on his handiwork some 30 years later: “To the extent that these new social virtues [i.e., New Deal policies] developed, they were tortured interpretations of a document [i.e., the Constitution] intended to prevent them.” They knew exactly what they were doing.
So when today’s liberals tell us the Constitution authorizes the vast federal programs that now reduce so many Americans to government dependents, they reveal their historical ignorance — or their political ambition. And they’re reduced to the silliness we saw in Tuesday’s New York Times, where the Times editorialists ranted against today’s constitutional reading as “a theatrical production of unusual pomposity.” Illustrating their own penchant for pomposity, they then dug into their bag of adjectives and let loose: “a self-important flourish,” “their Beltway insider ritual of self-glorification,” “a presumptuous and self-righteous act,” “an air of vacuous fundamentalism,” ”all of this simply eyewash,” “a ghastly waste of time.” They must have been emotionally drained when they finished their screed.
The Constitution is not a blank slate, details to follow, as decided by transient majorities. Were it that, it never would have been ratified. After all, we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of overweening government, and fought a Civil War to institute at last the grand principles of the Declaration of Independence. Nor will those principles be restored in a day. But today’s reading will start a debate that is sorely needed, at the end of which one can hope for restoration.
ID Requirements and the Indigent
I’ve emphasized in the past that a national ID requirement—for travel, for work, whatever the case—would exclude the indigent from rungs on the ladder.
If you don’t know the story of the homeless man whose golden radio voice got him a second chance, you should. But, as the New York Daily News reports, his long-awaited reunion with his mother has been delayed while he proves his identity so he can fly.
A land of freedom doesn’t put paperwork requirements between a man on the rebound and a long-awaited reunion with his mother.
Earmarks and Federal Grants
Federal taxpayers helping foot the tab for renovations to a local wine bar? It sounds crazy, but that’s par for the course with HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program.
A Connecticut newspaper recently ran an article on CDBG money being used to spruce up storefronts in the town of Putnam:
The Small Cities Community Development Block Grant money slated for Cohen’s building comes shortly after a similar grant project finished across the street, said Economic Development Director Delpha Very.
Facade improvements to the Glimpse of Gaia florist, Pangaea Wine Bar and Panache consignment shop finished last month, said building owner Sean Marchionte, of Providence-based Blue Dog Investments.
The building’s owner — go figure — thinks it’s just great:
“It’s very encouraging when you get help from the town. That’s what helps developers like myself make improvements to our buildings, attract tenants and keep the economic ball rolling in the right direction,” he said.
First, the help came from federal taxpayers — not the town. Second, robbing from Peter to pay Paul, which is what federal grant programs accomplish, does not keep the “economic ball rolling.”
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